LIFE TOWER 1

This is a hybrid proposal between Urbanism and Architectural building, with vertical expansion criteria. It is designed to host a colony of one million humans, and which in turn allows the progressive construction of spaces. This concept of architectural design is inspired by the tendencies of Brutalist Architecture and Organic Architecture, which offers to apply the concept of "Object" in space, easy to be recognized at a distance, and that allows creating an emotional bond with the building.

Details and technical description of the concept called "LIFE TOWER 1" can be found in the PDF document attached (LIFE_TOWER_ONE_concept.pdf). Considering a colony of one one million of humans as a relatively small quantity for a colossal scale of the concept, I propose to optimize the usable space based on artificial acclimatization, operation, maintenance and protection in the hostile environment of Mars.

The 3d design development process is focused on real-time visualization, and the whole development process was exposed, from the three-dimensional model in Autodesk 3ds Max, texture maps and materials development in Substance, until its integration into Unreal Engine and standalone VR application.

The main goal is to present an interactive visualization proposal, which will allow the user point of view on the human scale with the use of HTC Vive device. As an additional outcome of the same development process, it will be possible to offer 360-degree visualizations for low-end devices in some areas of the VR simulation, thanks to the NVIDIA Ansel tool.

My personal challenge will be to represent as faithfully as possible an abstraction process that will require to be able to live in Mars, as well as what it would be like to visualize the environment in the first-person point of view.

The VR experience is set on the main crater of the "Mawrth Vallis" (20 Square Kilometers), which was developed according to the official topographic land-survey of NASA, exactly the same as the real on Mars. The building siting corresponds to the result of an analysis on the protection for strong winds and high-intensity sandstorms. This VR Experience has as purpose to have the first-person perception point of view as within in Mars, which allows to visualize the architectural proposal at real scale according to the immediate environment. Additionally, it includes the "Mars Stormwind turbines" (belonging to the winning design of Mars Home Planet: 3D Modeling Challenge) located on the outer perimeter of the crater, as well as a Solar PV Mounting Structures array on the edge of the crater that complete the tour. The HTC Vive device was key to this VR development, as it's the most complete technology available on the market today that allows full user immersion inside the 3d scene. The Unreal Engine software was also used to be able to achieve the best results for VR available, for its wonderful quality for lighting calculation, the versatility for complex Physically Based Rendering (PBR) materials development, its power for handling complex scenes, 3D animations as well as its built-in post-production FX. It is noteworthy that this was a 3D Design Project developed against the clock since the deadlines for delivery for the contest were very short for the scale and details of the development proposed.